Dark Secret (2016)

by Edward M. Lerner

  “You’re such a drama queen. Marvin, show our guest kid-vid two.”

  The crib-panel displays went dark. The low, steady heartbeat became…something else. Primitive. Dissonant. On the crib-panel displays, lightning flashed. Beneath the music, thunder rumbled.

  Rikki shivered. “What the hell is—”

  “Watch,” Li commanded. “Listen. Learn.”

  From the lightning-torn night sky slowly emerged…a face. Rikki’s face. The music swelled, grew more urgent and…scarier.

  “The Rite of Spring,” Li said. “The children will never appreciate Stravinsky, I’m sad to say, but that’s a sacrifice worth making.”

  And Rikki’s face morphed into—

  A hooded…thing. Coiled. Scaly. Black with, as it reared its head, a fish-white underbelly. Hissing, swaying. It studied her dispassionately through little beady eyes. A forked tongue flickered in and out, in and out between its jaws.

  Rikki’s skin crawled. She felt her eyes go round. On the back of her neck, hairs prickled. Before she could find her voice, the thing lunged. In full 3-D.

  She yelped.

  “The effect is even more impressive with the room night-dim,” Li said. After a brief return to a stormy night sky, Blake’s face began to emerge. “Stop vid.”

  This was…hateful. Psychological torture. Madness. Whether from shock or her lingering illness, Rikki’s knees threatened to buckle. Groping behind her, she edged backward to lean against a wall.

  “The vid goes on to Dana and Antonio, too, if you wondered.”

  “Why?” Rikki managed to get out.

  “You can figure out why,” Li said cheerily. “I doubt you can figure out how. Had you ever seen a king cobra?

  “N-no.”

  “Nor have I. I’ve seen snakes, of course. On Earth. I don’t recall ever seeing a snake on Mars. A good choice on someone’s part, not to import any.” Li laughed. “Or maybe Saint Patrick was involved.

  “But I digress. King cobras are nasty things. Very poisonous. And without ever having seen one, at some level you knew to fear it. As the children do, instinctively.

  “Dread and loathing of reptiles lives deep in our hindbrains. No one knows how early in mammalian evolution that wiring emerged. It could date to the twilight of the dinosaurs, when the reflex to flee reptiles would have served our earliest progenitors well. I merely associated your faces with that reflex. All in the children’s first months, before they even began to speak. They can’t conceptualize the fear, much less articulate it. They just have it. And when a child is loud or disobedient, a flashed image of a king cobra—or of you—sobers him up quickly.”

  Rikki shuddered. “You’re a monster.”

  “Name-calling, really? That’s the best you’ve got?” Li smiled. “Take comfort in knowing the children won’t miss you.”

  “I don’t understand,” Rikki said.

  “Perhaps this will make it clearer.” Li reached behind her back, pulling something from her waistband. Something Rikki had not seen since helping to unload cargo from Endeavour soon after Landing Day.

  A handgun.

  35

  “Something’s wrong,” Blake decided.

  “Something often is,” Dana agreed, eyes fixed on her nav console. “Might I trouble you to be more specific?”

  “In a sec.” The latest asteroid to be overtaken was almost within laser range. “Firing…now. Another dud. How many is that?”

  “I leave the big numbers to Antonio. So tell me, what’s wrong?”

  “The latest one-line note from Rikki. They all say she’s fine, but if she were she’d have more to say. Or she’d answer a question or two of mine. Or she’d record a vid, or at least a voice message.”

  “Or she’s fine and very busy. As we are.” Dana coaxed Endeavour onto a new course. “Call it fifteen minutes till the next rock comes into range.”

  “I’m not too busy to contact her.”

  “Well good for you. You’re not the one dealing with more sick kids every day. I don’t know what to tell you other than do your job. We need vanadium. We’ll stay out here ’til we find it or Li says we’re needed more back home. And just so you know, it would be a bit less creepy if you didn’t spy on your wife through Marvin.”

  Blake wasn’t proud of that, either. He had just wanted to see Rikki looking other than green around the gills. And when he saw her in the yard, keeping an eye on the healthy kids at play, he’d told Marvin he had all he needed.

  Ignoring Dana’s disapproving glance, Blake replayed the short vid clip. When it stopped, he left the final image open on an aux display.

  They handled the next asteroid encounter with minimal words, and the all too familiar failure. And the asteroid after that. And the two co-orbiting rocks after that. Blake began counting the minutes until Antonio would relieve him.

  “Will you please take down that vid?” Dana asked. “Rikki is fine. You have a problem.”

  “I can’t put my finger on it, but I know. I’m certain. Something is wrong. We need to go back.”

  “When we have what we came—”

  “An interesting thing,” Antonio said from the hatchway. Blake hadn’t heard him coming. “Did you—”

  “Not now,” Blake and Dana snapped in unison.

  “Yes…now.”

  Something in Antonio’s voice made Blake turn and look. Antonio was craning his neck, staring past Blake at the playground scene.

  “See the…two moons?”

  Two moons, daylight pale, glimmered above the childcare center. The larger body was at half phase; the smaller was only a crescent. By their sizes, Aristophanes and Aeschylus.

  “Uh-huh,” Blake said. “What about them?”

  Antonio reached over Blake’s shoulder, extending a fingertip into the holo. “The timestamp shows today’s date. The positions and phases of the moons are from twelve days ago.”

  Before Rikki fell ill! Before they left! Blake said, “We have to head back. ASAP. Li and Carlos are lying.”

  “It could be an honest discrepancy,” Dana said hesitantly.

  Blake shook his head. “AIs don’t make mistakes like that. Not on their own. Li or Carlos is using Marvin to hide something.”

  “I see another possibility.” Dana took a deep breath. “Blake, you won’t like this. Maybe the medical situation is more serious than they’ve admitted to us.”

  “And Rikki is….” Blake couldn’t finish the thought aloud. “You think they’re keeping it secret lest we come charging home without what they need.”

  “It’s possible. Sorry, Blake.”

  “You think they’d lie, compel Marvin to lie, all because they don’t trust us to do the right thing?”

  Dana shrugged.

  “They’d have told you, wouldn’t they? Made sure you knew the urgency?” And to Antonio, who had jammed himself between pilot and copilot seats to poke at a console, Blake snarled, “Can’t that wait?”

  Dana said, “But they didn’t. I’d have told you.”

  And she would have. Blake was certain. “Li and Carlos are hiding something.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I can’t prove it, but—”

  “But I can,” Antonio said. “Look.”

  The playground was gone, vanquished by a long-range surveillance image of Dark. On the shore of the Darwin Sea, the settlement was little more than a dot.

  “From station beta on Aristophanes.” Antonio reached into the holo to indicate a faint oval smudge, darkest around the settlement. “See that? It’s most visible in infrared wavelengths.”

  Smoke? Precious little on Dark could burn, apart from the ethanol they produced. Blake banished insane notions of medieval plagues, of criers calling to bring out the dead, of mass funerary bonfires.

  Dana must have had the same thoughts. “A dietary deficiency can’t be contagious. What are they burning?”

  Antonio shook his head. “That’s not smoke. Area temperature readings are normal. We must b
e seeing dust. From major construction or…destruction.”

  “Amid a health crisis?” Blake said. “They are lying to us, and they’re not letting Rikki communicate. Dana, we have to go back.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “Buckle up, guys.”

  They were deep within the local asteroid belt and almost a quarter of the way around the sun from Dark. Over the course of their search, they had built up considerable speed. Blake reached for his datasheet to do the math.

  “Three and a half days,” Antonio said. “More or less. That’s with the DED running wide open.”

  Two gees all the way.

  Blake said, “Let’s get going.”

  36

  As jails went, Rikki’s accommodations weren’t bad. She had windows (too small and high to wriggle through, even if she had had the strength), a padded bench on which to rest, a toilet and sink, even a shower. The room was clean. At night, the ceiling glow panel gave more than ample light. Prisoners in stories paced out the dimensions of their cells, so she had. Call it four meters by five.

  When the nausea and vomiting returned she saw the silver lining to being locked inside a bathroom.

  After the nausea passed and she could stop hugging the toilet, she attacked the exterior wall with a spoon, the only utensil provided with her—untouched—food tray. She scraped long enough to confirm she’d need geological time to dig through the concrete. The shallow scratch, if anyone asked, was to mark Day One. In stories, prisoners also kept calendars.

  From afar, every so often, she heard engine roars, and rasping, and deep whooshing rumbles. She remembered Carlos on the backhoe-loader—could it have been only that morning?—and wondered how it could have anything to do with Li’s…insurrection.

  When Rikki called at a window (oddly dusty) for help, the children ran.

  Damn that horrible video! Damn Li!

  Do I instinctively fear snakes? Rikki wondered. Does everyone? Maybe I only learned the fear growing up. Grandma Betty had had a thing about snakes.

  But none of that mattered. The morphing faces and jarring music were surely terrifying enough.

  Just as the children’s dread of her was clear enough.

  Out of sight, around a corner of the childcare center, the sounds of play soon resumed. Every happy shriek was like a knife twisting in Rikki’s gut.

  There was nothing left to do but remember, and that was the most painful of all.

  Her datasheet! Straight from her pocket, still folded, she whispered into it, “Marvin, unlock the bathroom door.”

  Silence.

  She pushed on the door and it would not budge. Maybe the lock’s wireless interface had been disabled. She tapped out an email warning to Blake. Li’s gone nuts. Come back at once!

  Rather than an acknowledgment when she tapped Send, the pop-up read, I’m sorry, Rikki. I’m afraid I can’t do that.

  Nor, she found, could she access the safety cameras to monitor what transpired outside. It dawned on her: Marvin had been blocking her messages to Blake all along. Carlos’s doing, she supposed. The man knew computers.

  Weary, defeated, Rikki lay down and closed her eyes. And opened them almost at once, to banish the image of Li brandishing her gun.

  If Rikki had even remembered Endeavour had weapons in its cargo, she’d have thought them packed away forever. Anachronisms. Useless. Not as much as a gnat existed on Dark to harm them. To take up arms after billions—whole worlds—had perished? It was more than horrendous, beyond obscene.

  And she was hopelessly naïve. An end to violence would only come when human nature changed.

  The lock clicked.

  “Stand back,” Li called. “I’m armed.”

  Rikki, who had been pacing, sat on the bench.

  Li entered cautiously, looking around the room. With gun in hand, she indicated the food tray. “You should eat.”

  “You expect me to believe this meal isn’t poisoned?”

  “That’s your theory?” Li laughed.

  “You obviously poisoned me. To keep me behind as your hostage?”

  “Not exactly. In fact, at first I was annoyed at how the timing worked out, that you’d be staying behind. Tying up loose ends would have been easier without you underfoot. But you know what? I’m glad you’re here. You’ll be more convincing when the others return.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Not exactly?’”

  “I did do something to you,” Li said. “Someday, maybe you’ll thank me. ’Til then I trust it will make you cautious.”

  “I’m your goddamned prisoner! I can’t do a thing. So stop being coy and tell me. What did you do?”

  “Carlos and me. Do you remember the immune-system booster shot at your last routine physical? That was actually software updates for your nanites.” Li smiled. “All that’s wrong with you is a major case of morning sickness.”

  “I’m…pregnant?”

  *

  Pacing, sleeping, and staring out the window. It passed the time but provided no answers.

  Nothing Li had done made sense. Why reveal having warped the children? Just to brag? Why hold Rikki as a prisoner? Did Li think she and her gun could hold everyone at bay once Blake, Dana, and Antonio returned? She had to sleep sometime!

  And above all: why had Li enabled her to get pregnant?”

  Staring out the window, Rikki screamed, at everyone and no one, “Are you crazy?”

  Children scattered. In seconds they had abandoned all of the play area visible from her window.

  Not once in two days had Rikki seen an adult in the yard to supervise the kids. Was that the shape of things to come?

  *

  “Come,” Li ordered. “And bring your coat. We’re going outside.”

  Rikki didn’t budge from her seat. “Why? Do you have more abuse to boast about?”

  “I’m not the one yelling at the children.” Holding open the bathroom door, Li backed into the corridor. Her other hand held a gun. “I assume you’d like to know what this is about. And before you try anything stupid, remember: you’re pregnant.”

  “As an elaborate, especially cruel, slow-motion way to kill me?” Because you’re that sick.

  “Oh, never mind what I told your doting husband. ‘Could be fatal’ leaves a great deal of wiggle room. I’d give you four-to-one odds you’ll be fine.” Li gestured. “Out. I have things to show you. Things that, once you’re free, you’ll want to tell your friends.”

  Free? Without a hostage, how did Li expect—whatever she was up to—to outlast Endeavour’s return? She had to sleep sometime.

  “You’re adorable when you’re confused. Come. Your questions will all be answered.”

  Seething, Rikki followed.

  Just inside the open(!) gate at the north end of Main Street, she saw Carlos. And a bulldozer, parked. And a dozen or more of the older children with rakes and shovels. Only you couldn’t dig in the rock-hard ground.

  “What are they doing?” Rikki asked.

  “All in good time.”

  Their first stop was the settlement’s primary, deeply buried bunker. A tornado shelter, at Antonio’s insistence, not that they had ever had a tornado. Li motioned Rikki away from the double steel doors to palm the handprint reader, then backed away.

  “You first,” Li said.

  Rikki raised one of the heavy doors. It fell to the side with a crash. The late afternoon sun touched only the first few steps, and she tapped the light-switch sensor. Her heart pounding, she scanned their most precious possessions: the embryo banks, still almost full. Bags of seed. Marvin’s servers. Everything appeared untouched—but she knew Marvin had been altered.

  What else, unseen, had Li and Carlos…tainted?

  “We don’t have all day. Down.”

  “So you can shut me inside?”

  Li sighed. “I could have locked you here in the first place, couldn’t I? Just go down. Trust me, it’ll be worth it.”

  Hugging the railing, Rikki started down the concrete stairs. A
tall stepladder she had last seen in the greenhouse, where she had used it to replace a cracked roof panel, leaned against the opposite wall. Everything else in the bunker was as Rikki remembered it—even the sturdy steel hook of the chain hoist on which, as usual, she cracked her head.

  She reached the bottom and had circled half the bunker floor before her captor descended the first few steps. Li said, “Look up. Higher.”

  Well beyond Rikki’s reach, strapped to the two steel beams that braced the concrete ceiling, packages…blinked.

  Li took something from her pocket. “The trigger.”

  Rikki did not want to believe. “Those are explosives?”

  “More than enough to bring the roof of the bunker crashing down.”

  And thereby end…everything. As from a great distance, Rikki heard herself ask, “Why?”

  “Here’s some old Earth history you might never have learned. Two great-power archenemies. Each side had enough nukes to obliterate its rival many times over. And neither side ever launched its missiles. Neither side dared, knowing the other would retaliate. Even an overwhelming first strike without warning might leave intact enough weapons for a devastating counterstrike. Strategists called the policy MAD. Mutual assured destruction.”

  It was mad, all right. “What can you possibly hope to accomplish?”

  “Our history lesson isn’t quite done.” Li poked at her remote. Overhead, alongside both blinking lamps, bright red numerals appeared. 25:14:06. A standard Dark day.

  The counters began ticking down.

  “I must reset the devices daily. That’s my failsafe. If anything were to prevent me…”

  Rikki shivered. “What if something comes up? What if you can’t do the daily rest?”

  “Après moi, le déluge.”

  “What?”

  Li sneered. “Didn’t they teach history on Mars? You all deserve to be extinct. It’s French. Louis XV. ‘After me, the flood.’ And, as prophecies go, close enough. His son lost his head.”

  “Meaning?” Rikki asked despairingly.

  “Meaning you’d best see to it that nothing ‘comes up’ before I’m prepared to disarm. As to my purpose until then, you shouldn’t be surprised. A free hand with raising the children. You and your friends wouldn’t allow that when I offered you all the choice.”